Marketing Commons^™

The Shop Windows Were Full Of Sparkling Chains: Consumer Desire And Woolf’S Night And Day, Elizabeth Outka

English Faculty Publications

“You know the horror of buying clothes” (L2 232), wrote Virginia Woolf to her sister in 1918. This statement takes us to the heart of early critical assumptions about Woolf and consumerism. Following good modernist principles, the argument ran, Woolf’s art was naturally above shopping, distinct from and even a reaction against consumer culture. More recently, critics such as Jennifer Wicke, Rachel Bowlby, and Reginald Abbott have unsettled this separation and have started to consider the complex relations among consumption, the market, and Woolf’s writing. Most of this attention, however, has focused either on selected essays or on Mrs. Dalloway …